“Yes—It seems that I have a reputation! You would neglect your studies, miss your examinations, wreck your chances of a wealthy marriage—heaven knows what not! So they have made up their minds to put a stop to it.”
“Made up their minds—” An odd light was kindling in Ordham’s eyes, which no longer looked juvenile, or even absent.
“It is a cabal. I only learned of it by the merest chance—rather, to be exact, through the consideration of one faithful friend. They have agreed to cut me, drop me, mortify me so that I shall no longer have the courage to go anywhere. Meanwhile they will shower you with invitations that you may not have an instant’s time to seek me. When you no longer meet me, even see me, of course you will forget my existence, after the fashion of volatile youth. Even the men that once liked me are in the plot, for they have guessed for a long time that I was interested in no one but you; and men are pettier than women.”
She told this preposterous story with so much concentrated passion, such bitterness and venom of accent, that almost any man would have believed her. And Ordham was young and full of the vanity of youth. His eyes were blazing, his jaw line looked even longer than usual. She was quite aware that he mistook his natural (and British) resentment at coercion of any sort for righteous wrath, also, that by this time he knew something of the petty cabals and intrigues of European court society; whose smiling distaste for truth in any form, he had once remarked to her, made even his diplomatic soul feel blunt and Anglo-Saxon.
“They have persuaded themselves that they think only of your welfare, that extraordinary future they all predict for you. But they know what their real motive is! It is their opportunity to cast me out, a pleasure too long deferred. And out, I suppose, I must go.”
“Well, I will go with you.” This came through his teeth. “How dare they?”
Her eyes dilated, but she dropped her lashes. She was not so carried away by her victory as to lose sight of its contributing cause. To ask him now if he loved her, to pin him down, might be fatal.
“Dare? They have taken you up to such an extent that they look upon themselves as the natural arbiters of your destiny. They are devoted to you. They have made you the fashion. Not tamely will they sit by and watch their work undone. If you want the whole truth,” she ran on with her amazing fertility, “they even wish to make you one of them. They have decided upon the Brobdingnagian daughter of the rich Herr von Schmidt, whose beer is justly famous. She is to be presented privately to the Queen-mother, and then she will be formally on the market. She looks as if she had beer in her very veins, and her ankles are as thick as my waist. But what does that signify? She is the only child of an ennobled Schmidt and will inherit millions. They will succeed! They will succeed! They are so clever—and you—you are so indolent—you would accept any one determined to marry you. It is your destiny to be managed, and when these friends fling garlands about your neck and gold dust into your eyes, you will murmur: ‘What a bore, but why not? My family expect something of the sort. What matter a yellow skin and thick ankles?’ While I—I—” She pounded the table in her mounting passion, no longer entirely simulated. “I shall be an outcast. Once out, they will never let me in again. Fritz, stupid as he is, will notice, inquire; he will treat me as badly as the rest. I shall have the whole world against me. I have always had the whole world against me. Those words will be found flaming in my heart when I am dead. Even if I left Munich, these people would hound me. It is my destiny. I can never escape it—never! never! You cannot understand; you, who were born at the top, who would compel deference for that alone if you committed the seven deadly sins, if you wore rags in Australia—while I—I, the daughter of a small merchant,—even if I had married a duke, the world would never let me forget that I was born bourgeois. And a mere ritter, like Fritz—”
“Oh, please, please compose yourself! Let us go into another room.” Ordham was cold with terror. A scene threatened him, with all Munich as audience. She had stirred his anger, his dramatic sense, his pity; but for the moment he had no thought of her. She controlled herself so quickly and completely, however, that he was moved to admiration. “Forgive me,” she said quietly, wishing that she had worn black velvet instead of this frivolous Lorelei costume, but contriving to look dignified in spite of her flushed cheeks and suffused eyes. “How could I forget myself? But I was carried away by the thought of that abominable cabal—remember that I only heard of it this afternoon. I wonder if they will succeed?”
“Of course not.”